


fifty lives and the red string of fate (but not really)

by wartransmission



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Reincarnation, Soulmates AU, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 09:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10682178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wartransmission/pseuds/wartransmission
Summary: There are people who think that destiny decides how their lives will be led, how their future will go, how they will find the one fated to be their heart's other half.Katsuki Yuuri has never been the type of person for fate, as he is the type of person for action.[A Soulmates-but-not-quite AU and Reincarnation AU, rolled into one.]





	fifty lives and the red string of fate (but not really)

In their first life, they meet as children born in humble homes and simple lives.

They do not know of the trouble of royalty. They are untouched by riches, untouched by greed, and for all that they are hopeful younglings, Viktor with his hope to be their town’s best storyteller and Yuuri following in his footsteps, they are still pure and untainted by the wants of their fellow children in higher stations.

And yet, for all of their simplicity, their story is far from it.

They are friends, first.

Yuuri follows after Viktor’s footsteps, literally, filling the footprints he leaves behind with his own smaller feet in an attempt at feeling closer to his friend. Yuuri watches him as often as he possibly can, ever-rapt as Viktor weaves his stories of glory, romance, and constant surprises to his audience of children. Viktor eventually teaches him how to weave his own tales, how to grab and clutch at his audience’s attention, and he _thrive_ s.

They are lovers, second.

Yuuri is the one to grasp at courage and confess, if only to end the nigh interminable torture of the “maybe”s and “what if”s of Viktor’s feelings for him. Viktor says yes, says that Yuuri is loved back, as he often will in the future lives they will unknowingly lead with each other.

(They both cry at knowing the other feels the same, and they continue to be a mess of tears for almost the entirety of an hour.

They do not regret this.)

For the beginning of the final chapter of their first life, they bind themselves together with a promise.

Yuuri at age nineteen ties a red string around Viktor’s pinky, and tells him the story passed down by his great grandmother to his grandmother, then his grandmother to his mother, and his mother to him. He tells him of the lovers connected by a red string, fated to be together, and then tells him that fate will not decide what they will be for each other.

“I tie this string around your finger as a sign of my love,” Yuuri tells him, his words a vow of marriage as he smiles up at Viktor. He is crying, as he had been when they’d first confirmed their mutual adoration, and Viktor cries as an answer (because his heart, for all that it is seemingly ever-calm, is a sensitive, fragile little thing when faced with his Yuuri’s tears).

“They say that fate has decided our lives for us,” Yuuri continues, smile teary-eyed and beautiful as he squeezes Viktor’s hand in his, “but I decide that I will live out the rest of my life with you, as well as my future lives. Even upon death, when my spirit has finished its first cycle and finds a new life, I will find you, and I will love you still.”

“And I,” Viktor breathes, voice shaky as he ties the end of the red string to his betrothed- to his _husband_ , “vow the same. I will love you now, I will love you in the years to come, and I will love you in the lives that I will live after this one.”

Unknowingly, or knowingly, they have written out the backbone of their future lives with a single vow.

 

* * *

 

 

In their second life, VIktor finds Yuuri first.

They are separated by miles and miles of ocean and land, Viktor residing in Winter’s abode and Yuuri in the embrace of Spring. And yet, beyond the distance of islands and oceans, they find each other still. Viktor finds Yuuri, and somehow-

Somehow, they already know each other. Somehow, they already know what love is ( _who_ love is), and when they first touch, the feeling of the other is so familiar that they cannot help but cry.

There is peace in the world, still. People hold no judgment for who you love, not due to a sense of equality, but because there is no reason to discriminate on love at all. The “purest of love,” they call it, for the mere fact that it is so selfless of them to not desire children of their own in their choice to love each other.

In their second life, they continue where they left off in the first. Their memories are not as fresh as they could be, certainly, aged as they are through years of living, but they are fresh enough that loving Yuuri doesn’t feel like anything new as it does feel like something familiar and warm.

“It feels like I already know you,” Yuuri says, gaze fond and cheeks hot as he lets Viktor wrap him up in his embrace. He murmurs, burying further into Viktor’s warmth, “Even your embrace feels familiar.”

“I feel the same,” Viktor replies, his usually calm tone bright with love and new life as he holds Yuuri close, as though trying to meld them together into a single entity. Knowing the vague image of their past, with the first Yuuri and Viktor’s promise a solid, palpable thing, Viktor thinks it wouldn’t be a surprise if that was his body’s way of calling out to his soulmate. “It’s like we only slept for a long, long while, and woke up just to fall in love all over again.”

Yuuri laughs, because he knows no other better way to word it.

(In their second life, they remember each other still, and their love is a continuation of a story only just begun.)

 

* * *

 

 

In their tenth, twenty-ninth, fortieth, and so many other lives in the future, Yuuri and Viktor continue to meet, but never quite remember their past lives.

(How can they, when so many lives have already passed? The human body has only ever been made to handle one set of memories- to hold on to so much more would be a sure path to self-destruction.)

And yet, despite this, they fall in love. Over and over, in peaceful lives and not, they find each other and continue to fall in love as though fate had decided it to be so. Even if the truth is that Yuuri promised his future lives to Viktor, and Viktor vowed the same, there would be an idea constantly niggling in the back of their minds that this-

_This must be what fate is._

And who was Fate to argue, even if she had not been the one to write their stories out?

 

* * *

 

 

In their fiftieth life, Yuuri finds Viktor- the image, the idol, not quite yet the human being- first.

Viktor finds him soon after, and falls hard far too soon, far too fast, with only the thought that there would be no better place for him and his Makkachin than with this boy who brought life and love back into his heart again.

No one believes it when he says that he will coach the skater that flubbed in the last Grand Prix Final. No one believes that he can be devoted, loyal, and capable of concern for anything that isn’t the ice and it’s so-called “worthy” competitors. No one believes it when he says that he already knew of this man and his talent before the banquet, believing him to be careless and indifferent to people who have never even come close to reaching his level (with all of his golden medals, all of his awards, all of the glory and fame and victories).

They aren’t wrong.

They aren’t completely right either.

Because he knew of Yuuri, knew that the man was graceful and musical on the ice, even before the banquet. He knew of the man because he noticed the small tributes to him, the graceful bend and stretch of his arms and legs a quiet dedication to Viktor’s own grace.

He had known of Yuuri then, with his slicked back hair, laser-focused gaze and unshakable focus.

(Until the Grand Prix Final, that is.)

And Viktor is not old, even at 27, but his memory has never been loyal to him even at his youngest. He has a fondness for Katsuki Yuuri’s skating, finding his little tributes sweeter than anything else, but he has only ever been familiar with the man on the ice and wearing his hair back without his glasses.

So he commits his first mistake in a list of many by not recognizing the man as his fellow competitor, and is thusly punished by having Yuuri’s back turned to him in an unspoken rejection.

(He doesn’t know it then, doesn’t quite think they’re soulmates yet, but it hurts. Somewhere deep in his chest, in the space where his heart lies, his soul cries out in dismay at being so openly disregarded by a man he’d only thought he offered kindness to.)

Then the banquet happens, and the rest is (unforgettable) history.

In the same way that Yuuri had caught Viktor by surprise in his drunken plea to him, Viktor surprises Yuuri right back by showing up in his family’s onsen. As they had in their first life, they continue their endless chain of surprises for each other as though creating their own unusual courting ritual in a cycle worthy of the definition of karma. Unknowingly, or knowingly, they fall into love with a speed that would be confusing for some, had they not known the history of one to the other. Yuuri, with his adoration for Viktor since he first saw him at age 12, and Viktor, having begun his fall into affection ever since their banquet-turned-revelry.

It helps, probably, that there are forty-nine lives that have created the foundation for the fiftieth one.

**Author's Note:**

> hOLY smOKES it's almost 1am and i have work tomorrow
> 
> im fucKEd
> 
> gOODNIGHT FRIENDS!!! let me know if y'all liked it!! ❤️❤️❤️


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